


Lost Children

by misaffection



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misaffection/pseuds/misaffection





	Lost Children

Bialar finds his way along the passageway through habit more than conscious thought. His chest is burning; Talyn is raging in anger and grief, communicating his loss in the only way he knows. In the only way he has been taught, and Bialar knows that in some respects he deserves this pain. His quarters are in darkness but he does not bother with the lantern. The darkness matches his mood after all. He removes his jacket, letting it fall to the floor, and then sits on the bed. He is going through the motions, his mind elsewhere.

He can _see _them.

Aeryn need not censure him any more than she had because the best revenge, comeback, call it whatever fits, is simply getting on with a life that excludes him. He doesn't care about Crichton, but Aeryn… Aeryn would probably consider even Rygel before she would lower herself to his level.

He wonders how he ever sank this low.

It began, he supposes dully as he clambers into his cold, empty bed, on the day he was recruited. He was too old for it really, not as malleable as the others, less ready to swallow the lies they were fed.

Lies, propaganda, rhetoric. The others had been younger, more willing to believe the stories. He had asked too many questions, until they had beaten that curiosity out of him. For a while he would give in, let them ply him with lies and false praise, turning him into the good little Peacekeeper that was their perfect design. Then they would ask something new, push him that little too hard, and he would pull back.

And they pushed him on with threats and blows and comments of how worthless he was and how he would never achieve anything. Somewhere along the line, he had become to believe that - to believe in Peacekeeper lies.

Bialar stills his restless tossing as Aeryn's words come back to haunt him, frozen by the sudden realisation that she was right and that he has lied to Talyn. Not once or twice, but over and over.

He thinks that he did not meant to, not really, that he just needed Talyn to understand, but there is a painful truth that he cannot hide from because it exists within his own mind. The truth is that he has tried to manipulate Talyn's infant awareness, tried to bend the hybrid ship to his will.

_You cannot order a Leviathan, you can only persuade_. He doubts that Aeryn meant those words in the manner he has used them.

An older memory surfaces; one he has not recalled for the longest time, not even when he gave Aeryn the datachip, because he keeps those things so far back, so tight in his head, that no one can get to them. So that no one can take the last thing he has of her. He does not remember her face - it is too long ago and he has been through too much for that detail to remain - but other things still linger; the softness of her hands, the smell of her perfume and the sound of her voice as she sang Tauvo to sleep.

_You cannot take a child from its mother!_

_Oh you can_, he thinks and makes no attempt to stop the bitter tears. Loss mingles with guilt as he considers how he has done to Talyn what was done to him, committed the same crime he detested his father for allowing.

What does that make him? The answers come too quickly - murderer, kidnapper, abuser. Bialar groans and rolls onto his side, but there is no escaping the truth: he cannot hide from himself.

He didn't mean it. He didn't! He just misses her, still, and he aches for something. Has done for so long that he no longer even remembers what that is. Only knows that he is incomplete somehow.

Talyn helps to fill the gap, and if Bialar is honest that is why he took the implant. Not to win against Aeryn or to control Talyn, but to replace the overwhelming need inside him. He does not mean to command Talyn any more than he did Tauvo, but he does it anyway, because he is supposed to be the responsible one.

This emotional ship needs guidance. His own words, about Talyn, but they might as well have been about himself. He is lost, no longer a Peacekeeper, but with no direction as to what he should be now. Only here, in the darkness and silence of his quarters does he dare admit the loneliness he feels. The fear that comes from the uncertainty of what his life has become.

He tried to explain it to Aeryn, but managed only to reveal the truth of his relationship with Talyn, the effect that was having on him physically. It's not that he doesn't trust her with the rest of it, but that he simply does not have the words.

Bialar sighs heavily. It is too late now; even if she is willing to listen to him, she will not hear him. He doubts that she would believe him anyway, but whose fault is that? He has lost any trust that he has managed to build through lies and deception and his own frelling stupidity.

_I think… weather changes. And we just keep making the same mistakes._

There is, he decides now, a truth to that. He has certainly perpetrated one such cycle of mistake by kidnapping Talyn and doing to another being what was done to him. He has taken a child and created a creature in his own image, another lost child to wander the universe in search of something that it is unlikely to find.

What he wants - what he truly wants - is not Aeryn.

He can see her with the one she loves and though it hurts, he knows this as truth: she cannot be what he wants. Mainly because he does not know what that is. He is searching for something without knowing for what exactly.

It is possible that it does not exist - the past is, after all, unattainable.

Bialar knows that he cannot go back, not to the Peacekeepers or to what he was before then. Neither can he take this day back, cannot call back his lies, or undo his wrongs. All he can do is keep going and try again. He can start over with the new day and try to prove that he can - has - changed. That he can raise this hybrid child in the manner that it should be.

He determines to regain Aeryn's trust, if only on Talyn's behalf. He has done nothing wrong, other than make an unwise choice of captain, and so does not deserve her disregard. Talyn is the child here, and Bialar was the one who took him from his mother. Assuring him a family is the very least that he can do.


End file.
